


Trial by Ordeal

by crfaddis



Category: Star Trek
Genre: Addiction, Forced Drugs, Memory Alteration, Offscreen Suicide, Offscreen rape, Torture, Zinedom Archive Project, fanzine fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1975-11-01
Updated: 1975-11-01
Packaged: 2019-06-22 15:31:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15585000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crfaddis/pseuds/crfaddis
Summary: McCoy, Spock, and other crew members were taken captive by the brutal Kahseens for several months.





	Trial by Ordeal

**Author's Note:**

> This story first appeared in the Star Trek fanzine [Interphase #2](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Interphase_\(Star_Trek:_TOS_zine\)) and was reprinted in Computer Playback #5. It was accompanied by artwork by Kathi Maynard.
> 
> This story has been posted here at the request of the original creators.

******Trial by Ordeal**

**C.R. Faddis**

**Illustrated by Kathi Maynard**

 

 

The elegant white starship, the _Enterprise,_ the star-leaping pride of the Federation of Planets, sat dead in space at the outermost fringes of the Icarus solar system. Not exactly dead: it moved imperceptibly in an orbital path around the distant star, with only enough thrust to counter the feeble grasp of the star's outer gravity well. Technically, the _Enterprise_ could have been another satellite in the system: a seventh planet. In reality, it was an unwelcome alien, a potential invader, legally embargoed from intruding in Icaran space.

On the ship, James Kirk leaned against a cold metal bulkhead, staring through a wide window into space. The Observation deck was darkened and the only sound was the gentle hiss of the ventilation system. It was chilly, and Kirk hunched his shoulders, wrapping his arms around himself, as he gazed at the awesome beauty of Icarus and its little worlds. His body pressed against the bulkhead, subconsciously mimicking his yearning to be with the landing party, somewhere out there in a shuttlecraft.

But _his_ post was aboard the starship he commanded. It was perilous enough to have sent the _Galileo_ into the embargoed system; to risk political disaster by going there himself was unthinkable. So he remained aboard the mothership, obedient to the nervous demands of the Leda-Nevarre Assemblies, and to the dictums of the non-interference clause of the Prime Directive. Only his heart was absent; it rode in the shuttlecraft with Uhura, Sulu and the others, rode to ransom Dr. McCoy from the hellworld of Liss, rode to investigate the fates of Mr. Spock and Yeoman Schempp.

A rustle of stiff fabric behind him caught his attention, and he turned to greet Ambassador Hunth. The alien's toucan-like face was passive, but his slim body was drawn with tension. He acknowledged the captain's greeting, then joined him in gazing at the planets.

"There is Liss," Hunth commented, pointing at the third planet. Then he picked out the fourth and fifth. "Leda, and Nevarre."

Kirk shrugged, waiting for Hunth to deliver the bad news.

"The Assemblies were displeased with your proposal," the Nevarran began. "I told them that you were not going to pay the ransom the Kahseens demanded. I assured them that the phasers you would trade for your physician's life would self-destruct shortly after their first use. I even took the sample weapon your engineer provided, and demonstrated its malfunction. It fused almost immediately. Still, they distrust you. And now, perhaps, they begin to distrust me."

Kirk straightened, pushing his personal anguish aside for the moment, and looked over at Hunth thoughtfully. Hunth knew that he, Kirk, had already begun implementation of the desperate rescue plan, and the ambassador was gambling his own career by not revealing this knowledge to the Assemblies. But even before this event, Kirk and Hunth had grown to a deep, trusting friendship. Through four long months of the official touring of Federation planets and starbases -- a duty which Kirk loathed -- the emissaries of the Leda-Nevarre coalition had been markedly patient and pleasant. And Hunth, especially so. Kirk admired the alien's intelligence, sensitivity, and sense of ethics. He knew he could trust Hunth with his life.

"You know I wouldn’t give functional phasers to the insurgents," Kirk re-emphasized. "I couldn't if I wanted to; Federation directives are very specific about dissemination of weapons to aliens."

Hunth nodded, but his thin mouth frowned under glittering violet eyes.

" _I_ know that," he said in his softly accented English, "but the Assemblies only know that the man held by the Kahseen faction is your long-time personal friend."

"Doctor McCoy is a starship crewman," Kirk said coldly. "Personal feelings don't enter into the situation. I will do for him no more -- or less -- than I would do for any member of my crew."

Hunth caught the repressed anxiety in the captain's eyes and looked away. He noticed a nearby bench and forced himself to unbend enough to sit. Kirk, though, did not join him; rather, the captain resumed his vacant stare out into the void.

"James," Hunth began, "these last four months on your ship have been a rewarding experience for me. Hopefully, when this crisis is resolved, negotiations between my worlds and your Federation will resume, and Leda-Nevarre will vote to join the alliance. But to do so, we shall each have to overlook the shortcomings of the other. It is useless for me to apologize for the actions of the Kahseens..."

Kirk whirled suddenly and approached the Nevarran, squatting before him as a child might before his mentor.

"Hunth, who _are_ the Kahseens?" he demanded. "They're rebels, they live on Liss, but that's all I've been told. My people -- my friends -- have been in their hands for almost the whole time we've been gone with the ship. Only Ensign Chekov escaped the raid, and he couldn't remember much of what happened."

Hunth bowed his head wearily, an old man burdened with unpleasant duties.

"The Kahseens are barbarians," he said finally. "If _we_ were as uncivilized as they, we might have destroyed them long ago. Ah well...

''About one hundred and ten of your years ago, when Nevarre was perfecting its first interplanetary vehicles and the spirits of adventure and racial superiority were running high, my government decided to 'develop' the fourth planet, Leda. At that time, the Kahseens, who were native to Leda, were gathered and moved to reservations on Liss, a torrid but livable world with no natural sentient life. The Kahseens were nomadic tribes, and our attempts to 'civilize' them were neither kind nor intelligent."

"Something like that happened in North and South America on my home world long ago, too," Kirk muttered.

"Then perhaps you are sensitive to what a disaster such attempts usually are," Hunth continued. "In time, we outgrew our sociological naivete, but too late to preserve the cultural integrity and innocence of the Kahseens. About ten years ago, the tribes massacred caretaker agents on Liss, leveled the reservation facilities, and confiscated weapons and ships. They have since formed a campaign of terror, theft and reprisal, led by a nucleus of Nevarran-educated chieftains.

"The Prime Directive of your Federation is wise, James; my government is still paying for its sins."

"Why don't you give Leda back to the tribes," Kirk asked, "if it's really their world?"

"No such simple solution is possible; there are Nevarran-descended Ledans, now, who also have rights. And there are embarrassing, but undeniable, economic considerations as well. Worse, the Kahseens will accept no compromise -- they will have all of Leda -- and Liss -- and they will cheerfully murder every Nevarran to do it."

Kirk grimaced and pushed up from his crouch, taking the seat beside the ambassador. He rested his head in his hands.

"The Kahseens must have found out that I left a party of technical advisors on Nevarre," the captain said miserably. "The only member of that team who might have been of use to them, Commander Singh, was killed when they attacked; Chekov got away; Spock is a Vulcan and won't give them any useful information, and Bones and the yeoman probably can't."

Hunth stared out through the thick pane of glass.

"It is curious that the Kahseens offered only Dr. McCoy for ransom," the ambassador mused. It was not that he did not suspect the answer to his implied question, but that he wished Captain Kirk to consider -- and face -- the probabilities.

But Kirk only sighed and offered no conjecture.

When the silence became uncomfortable, Hunth gathered himself and stood, straightening the heavy folds of his dignitary's gown.

"I will return to Nevarre now to try to help you at the afternoon's Assemblies meetings," he said. "Only pray that they agree to your plan, or that your shuttlecraft is not detected by our navy."

"Right now, I'm just praying that my crew gets back safely," Kirk breathed. He, too, rose. "In the meanwhile, I have a ship to run, and I'm due back on duty in ten minutes."

They walked together to the doorway into the corridor, but Hunth stopped a moment and caught Kirk's arm.

"James," he said, then hesitated. He composed his seamed features into a dignified mask. "There is one other thing I feel that you must know," he confided. "You must prepare for, realize the fullness of it: the kindest act of all may have been to let the doctor die among the Kahseens."

Kirk's head snapped up. "Explain," he said faintly.

"The Kahseens do not waste," Hunth said grimly. "It is a dogma with them. They never discard something until it is no longer of any value; until it has been wrung dry; used up. Or hopelessly broken."

McCoy stood shivering in the chilling mist, his face slicked with the rain that had only just let up. He gazed lethargically at his captors, the Kahseens, the bitter, savage rebels of the Leda-Nevarre planets. They ignored him, their weapons sheathed, knowing that he was harmless to them, that he would not run even if he could. Four months of captivity had left no resistance in him -- he remained alive only because he had given them everything they demanded, and he knew that even that would not have saved him had he not been a physician. But they wanted weapons, now, and supplies, and they were going to trade him to Starfleet officials for them.

Sounds of crackling underbrush floated up from the steep valley below: the landing party, coming on foot as directed, coming to bargain for him. Somehow he could not raise any joy within himself. Soon he would be free. Soon after that he would probably be dead. It didn't seem to matter. But when he got his first glimpse of Starfleet uniforms through the dripping trees, he felt a thrill of fear that Jim Kirk would be among them. He could not face Jim, he did not want to tell his captain what he had done to Spock, what he'd _had_ to do.

His heart skipped a beat when he saw the gold tunic, but its owner was slim and dark-haired: Lieutenant Sulu. Uhura was trudging behind Sulu, and Dr. M'Benga and Nurse Chapel behind her. A non-com in Security red brought up the rear, carrying a heavy-looking package.

McCoy instinctively started toward them, but Nedzetler, the rebel who had made McCoy his personal charge, smashed him across the face with a powerful backhand. McCoy let the blow send him staggering into the weeds, not resisting. Face garishly tattooed, the Kahseen smiled down at him coldly and kicked him in the head for effect. The world reeled off in a crazy orbit.

Somewhere close, they were negotiating. McCoy could hear anger, threats, a laugh. That would be Tributar. Then there were hoots and more laughs, and the unmistakable whine of phasers: the ransom.

 _Why did Jim do it?_ McCoy wondered with horror. He knew it had been Jim Kirk who had decided to meet the Kahseens' demands for phasers and power-pacs. He damned Kirk and himself -- Jim for ignoring the Prime Directive, and himself for not having the decency to die first and avoid the whole impossible situation.

He heard the clacking of a Kahseen necklace. Obati was leaning over him, and the Kahseen amazon pulled him easily to his feet with one arm. The Kahseens were physically incredible -- a mammoth, thickset race of dynamos with endless determination and vicious tempers. McCoy stumbled where he was shoved, wondering if they were actually letting him go, or if he and the landing party were about to disintegrate in a phaser flash.

Uhura was the senior officer. Obati stood McCoy squarely in front of her, and though the Lieutenant's entire manner was dispassionate and military, McCoy caught the flicker of anguish in her eyes as she scrutinized him. He knew he little resembled his former self -- he was sick and he'd probably lost twenty percent of his body weight. His uniform was long gone and his only coverings were the greasy rags of Kahseen blanket that he'd been thrown. His hair hung dripping in long strings over his eyes and down his shoulders, but he had no beard yet: his last six-month depilatory was still working. The rain had traced rivulets in the grime on his exposed arms.

But Uhura knew him.

"This is our officer," she agreed. "The exchange is complete."

Obati snorted and pushed McCoy at her. Uhura caught him and took his arm tightly.

"Come with us, Doctor," she said neutrally, leading him.

Sulu came up on McCoy's other side to help, but at Uhura's hissed order, he took up the rear of the retreating party. They walked very slowly off the crest of the hill, not looking back, deliberately not hurrying.

"Will they really let us go?" Christine Chapel whispered.

"Keep walking, don't turn around," Uhura snapped. "Follow the path we made coming up."

The nurse took the lead and pushed through the rain-weighted branches, holding them aside for Uhura and McCoy. The Security chief went next, then M'Benga, and finally Sulu was swallowed up in the brush. They began to walk faster now that they were out of sight, but they could still hear the marrow-chilling shrieks of the Kahseens above.

"It's two kilometers to the _Galileo,"_ Uhura panted, pulling McCoy faster. "If the phasers we traded give out before we get off this planet, we're all dead."

Rushing through the tangled, dripping wilderness was nightmarish. The path was ragged, the slope steep and slippery, the tree branches and tall brambles merciless. The landing party splashed through the muddy stream at the bottom and scrambled up the overgrown bank. The G-and-a-half gravity made climbing an ordeal. McCoy couldn't keep it up. His legs went out from under him.

M'Benga bent to pull him up, but McCoy shrugged away. He wanted to tell them to leave him, to explain that he was going to die anyway, but it had been so long since he had heard or spoken English, that he suddenly could not find the words. Mute, he shook his head and pulled away from their reaching hands.

The whines of the phasers had stopped echoing down through the ground fog. Uhura waved everyone to silence and listened, but there were only the complaints of the woods-creatures, the gurgle of the stream, and the patter of wind-loosened raindrops from the tree branches. Satisfied, she knelt next to M'Benga in the spongy leaf mold and watched as he gave McCoy a shot of Tri-Ox.

"Can he travel?" she asked.

"We'll have to help him," M'Benga said. "But he doesn't seem to want to go."

Uhura gripped McCoy's shoulders and made him look at her. Her instinct was to be gentle, but there was no time now for mercy.

"We didn't risk our lives coming here to go back without you, Doctor McCoy," she said sternly. "Get up, or Dr. M'Benga will sedate you and we'll carry you back."

McCoy heard the steel in her voice, and he had no place left in him to disobey. _I'm not a man, I'm Pavlov's dog,_ he thought. _Tell me to do something and I've done it before I realized._

M'Benga and Chapel were helping him up, and then they were hauling him up the rising path, slipping and scrambling in the clay and wet leaves.

The sensation of _deja vu_ was suddenly overwhelming, and McCoy remembered hurrying up another such hill on this very planet, only it was summer then, and the Kahseens were around him, and he wasn't being pulled, he was pulling Spock, trying to keep him on his feet. Without even closing his eyes to shut out the present reality, McCoy could visualize his Vulcan friend's tissue pale face, the stony expression, the makeshift bandaging with its watery-green stains. He could feel the trembling in Spock's arms, the awful incongruous weakness in his once powerful body, the cold dampness of pain in his hands that he could not control. In his own gasps, he heard Spock's again, and under his breath, his own pleas: _Hurry! Don't fall now, they might not give you a chance to get up!_

The memory ground into him, clawed him bloody inside, but he must not give in to grief, not even now. And he had a new duty: he must not fail this one. He must run with the landing party, submit to them, for they would not go without him, and to stay was certain death. He did not want them on his conscience; not them, too.

The headlong running stopped. The shuttlecraft sat in the feeble rays of sun beginning to burn through the overcast. Another red-shirted Security mate sat atop it, and waved his tricorder urgently.

"They're a half kilometer behind you and coming fast!" he warned.

They stumbled through the scrub and across the clearing, piling into the little ship. Sulu helped M'Benga lift McCoy inside, and the Security mate slid the door shut on the grey grassy field. Then the engines hummed softly, and the sweet, cushioned acceleration of escape velocity pressed them into their seats. After several minutes, they were out of the planet's grasp and headed for open space.

McCoy closed his eyes wearily, feeling a curious twinge of regret at leaving his prison. _Maybe Obati was right,_ he thought. _Maybe they own my soul now._

He was startled by a flutter of sound above him and looked up sharply at the mediscan that M'Benga was passing over him. Christine Chapel hovered near, reaching over with a cloth to wipe the blood where a bramble had slashed him. McCoy reached up and seized her arm, frightened for some inexplicable reason. He saw the terrible pity in her puzzled face, which seemed simultaneously familiar and alien. He knew she was afraid for his sanity. He knew, too, that he really wasn't entirely sane anymore. He ran his hand down her arm until he captured her fingers, which he pressed tightly, seeking assurance in their substantiality.

"Is this real?" he whispered hesitantly, locking his eyes on hers.

She glanced anxiously at Dr. M'Benga, then smiled timorously at McCoy.

"I am real," she said earnestly. "We're taking you home, now. You're safe, Doctor McCoy."

That was a lie, but she didn't know it. M'Benga's eyes were on his medical tricorder, and his face was expressionless, but he might suspect it. Somehow, it didn't matter. But he, McCoy, had to know some things: there had been a tiny chance, so maybe...

"Where's -- Chekov?" he breathed.

Christine's smile steadied.

"Mister Chekov survived the Kahseen attack. He was with the Nevarrans when the _Enterprise_ returned," she told him.

Chekov. Resourceful, lucky Chekov had escaped the raid. McCoy had feared the man dead, but he'd had his hands too full with injured to search through the corpses, and then the Kahseens had come.

"What about Singh?" he rasped.

M'Benga put his tricorder aside and waved the nurse away. He swiveled one of the seats so that he faced McCoy, and began to prepare a hypospray.

"Commander Singh was killed in the raid," he told McCoy quietly. "There's been no word of anyone else, Doctor. Can you tell us what became of Mr. Spock and Yeoman Schempp? Do you know?"

McCoy's throat tightened with a sob, but long-strained habit wouldn't allow it. Overwhelming guilt tangled in his mind. He felt M'Benga's eyes on him, imagining that he could feel accusation in them.

"It was... my fault," he choked. His mind played back dreadful images. He shrank from them, shaking his head violently to escape them.

M'Benga caught him in kind, restraining hands. Gently, he forced McCoy to look at him, to recognize reality.

"Nothing is your fault!" he said emphatically. "You don't have to talk about it unless you want to, all right?"

He raised the hypospray to McCoy's arm, but the man flinched away.

"Easy, Doctor, it's just vitamins and an antibiotic. There. In a few hours we'll be back on the ship, and we'll get you a decent meal. Christine will give you a bath and put you into a warm, clean bed, and the captain and everyone will be very glad to have you back."

McCoy shook his head again, but wearily.

"No," he insisted sadly. "I can't."

M'Benga gestured for Chapel and walked to the fore of the shuttle, where Sulu and Uhura sat at the controls. Uhura saw him coming and motioned for the Security chief to take her post.

"How long until we dock?" M'Benga asked.

"A little more than two-and-a-half hours," she told him. "We can't use Warp drive, of course, because the Nevarrans might detect us."

She gazed over her shoulder to where Nurse Chapel had resumed tending to McCoy's lacerated check. The man looked like a lost soul.

"He's so quiet," Uhura sighed, meeting M'Benga's eyes. "How is he, Thuau?"

M'Benga's mouth went grim.

"What did we expect? He's traumatized. Severely malnourished. He has a low grade lung infection and what looks like amoebic dysentery He's been... abused. And they've been drugging him; there are heavy traces of some exotic alkaloid in his blood, and he has hypodermic needle scars all over his arms. I don't like the look of it -- the catabolism curve suggests addiction. We'll have to identify and synthesize that alkaloid as soon as we can. A rock-quarry cure would probably kill him."

"Rock-quarry cure?" she asked.

"Maybe you've heard it called 'cold turkey': a sudden forced abstinence from an addicting drug causes intense withdrawal symptoms."

Uhura saw the grief on M'Benga's face, but felt the heat of indignation on her own.

"Four months with those animals!" she growled. Then, more softly, "Is he sane?"

M'Benga shrugged.

"He's borderline. He knows something about Spock and the yeoman, but he seems to have painful inhibitions, possibly deliberate memory suppression, or even hysterical amnesia. We'll find out when we get him to Sickbay where we can help him. If we can help him."

Uhura lifted M'Benga's bowed head with two fingers under his chin.

"He'll improve, Thuau," she encouraged affectionately. "In no time at all, he'll be right back to arguing -- "

She stopped herself. She'd been going to say, _"arguing with Mr. Spock."_

"--To arguing with his patients," she finished hollowly.

She rose, wrestling with the cold pain in her stomach, surprised at the flood of grief that she’d never suspected. How did I feel about Mr. Spock? she wondered. She dismissed the nurse and took the seat opposite McCoy, then reached over and put her hand on his, noting its chill, the tremor in it. McCoy seemed not to notice her.

"Doctor McCoy, do you know me?" Uhura asked quietly.

McCoy stared at her blankly. He was aware of the trembling of his hand under hers, but the shaking was a remote effect; the real pain was a slowly mounting earthquake inside of him, and he knew it, he'd experienced it before: _withdrawal._

 _We all pay for our sins,_ he thought.

He seized Uhura's hand.

"What do you see?" he demanded of her. Did she see the murderer in him?

Her eyes were haunted pools of reflected pain.

"I see Doctor Leonard McCoy, one of the finest space physicians in Starfleet," she said steadily.

McCoy shook his head violently. He looked... mad.

"What do you _see!_ Be my mirror."

On an impulse, Uhura stroked his tangled hair. She sincerely liked McCoy. Whenever he'd appeared on the Bridge, the place had seemed to warm up. She wanted with all her strength to help him now. She sensed the earthquake inside of him, and decided what to say.

"I see a tired man, a very tired man who's been through a frightful ordeal, but who has _survived,"_ she said.

McCoy was tempted to laugh, but it came out as a groan.

"I'm dying," he choked. "There's a drug. I'm addicted. It was how they... kept me. After Spock."

Uhura swallowed her urge to press for more information. She took hold of McCoy's other clammy hand and pressed them both consolingly. She noticed the tracks of needles at the bend of his arms.

"Doctor M'Benga says we can help you," she assured him. "We'll be back to the _Enterprise_ in a few hours."

She started to rise to return to the helm, but McCoy didn't release her hands. His eyes made a silent entreaty: _don't go yet._ She sat down.

"Uhura," he said, and the tears in his voice would have melted an Amazon. _I have to rehearse it,_ he thought miserably. _I have to sort it out in my own mind before I can face Jim,_ He was silent, wrestling with his pain.

Uhura waited him out.

"We were on Leda, on the fourth planet," he began finally. "Someplace, I can't remember why we were there..."

His face dissolved into a grimace as he tried to piece together the memories he'd struggled for months to suppress.

"The Kahseens raided the outpost," Uhura prompted.

McCoy nodded. It was coming back to him with dreadful clarity, as though he were there again in the rain of flame and debris, in the swirling fog of dust and smoke, with the stink of molten clay and charred flesh to choke him. He freed one of his hands from Uhura's and touched at his hip, where he could feel the healed scars of his burns.

"I was hurt," he told her. I looked for the others. They weren't with me, I had to find them. I couldn't see through the smoke."

He closed his eyes and his memory played it back: _dragging Spock out of the flames, trying to treat the burns. An am badly fractured.  Compound. Where was the medikit? Here. Tetramycin for infection, B-Coradrenalin for shock._

"I found Spock," he forced himself to say. "He was unconscious. The Kahseens came, then."

_They jerked him to his feet, looming a good sixty centimeters over him at full height, and much broader, with the massive bone structure characteristic of higher-gravity worlds. They were bronze-skinned and dirty and they looked utterly wild, but the curt orders of their leaders and the prompt efficiency with which they were obeyed, spoke volumes of their considerable intelligence._

"They took us on a ship, took us to Liss. To their planet. It was hot. They had Nora Schempp too. We had to walk a long way..."

The march was vivid to him. He put his hands to his face, caught up in it again.

The Kahseen base camps were scattered far back in the forests of the temperate zone of the southern hemisphere, hidden from aerial detection and inaccessible except by hover-car or on foot. Hover-craft were scarce. They walked. They trudged an endless, sweaty route that skirted ten kilometres of a deep gorge, and when they finally crossed it at its narrow end via a footbridge, the Kahseens made warning gestures at the depths below.

Though he was breathless with pain and giddy with the height, McCoy forced himself to look down into the canyon. He blinked, seeing the source of the Kahseens' fear even from the quarter kilometer distance: dinosaurs! He shuddered. What other horrors did this God-forsaken planet hold?

The Kahseens stopped for a rest on the other side of the escarpment, and McCoy gratefully eased Spock down onto a boulder, collapsing beside him. When he had caught his breath, he checked the Vulcan's vital signs.

"Spock, how much longer can you hold off the healing trance?" he managed to gasp.

The Vulcan's face was unreadable. The thinner oxygen and extra gravity were easier on him than they were on McCoy, but the doctor didn't need electronic instruments to tell him the severity of Spock's injuries; he could see it in the ghastly skin tones, could hear it in the strained breaths. The Vulcan's hands were icy.

"The healing trance is a Vulcan discipline… not an autonomic response," Spock panted. "I can forego it if necessary."

McCoy gazed furtively at the goliaths seated around him: the Kahseens watched him and Spock with a mixture of curiosity, open contempt, and casual malice. McCoy realized he was maddeningly thirsty. Spock must be, too. He'd heard none of the Kahseens speaking anything intelligible, though he'd learned the spectrum of Nevarran languages by subliminal tapes when he'd been assigned to landing party duty. He decided to try Instructional Nevarran, and selected the appropriate phrases along with his most humble tone of voice.

"Might some honored person share some water with us? Your climate is difficult, and our injuries torture us with thirst," he said.

The rebels looked at him vacuously. Then one, an enormous Valkyrie of a woman, rose and approached him. She thrust a calabash-type water container at him. It was painted with geometric designs identical to those tattooed on the woman's face, breasts and abdomen. McCoy accepted the gourd, moving very slowly to assure her that he meant no trickery.

"I thank you," he said solemnly and raised the bottle to help Spock drink. Then he satisfied his own thirst.

The woman frowned at him and retrieved the calabash.

"You are from Sol-Terra. That star is known to our skies. Where does he come from?" she demanded, pointing at Spock.

Spock raised his head.

"I am Spock of Vulcan."

The woman smiled coldly. It made her look more menacing than her frown.

"We know who you are, we have good spies. I wish to know if the star of Vulcan can be seen from Liss."

Spock made a weak effort to sit up straighter.

"I do not know. I would have to calculate the position of this planet; of Vulcan; the distances; the intervening --"

"Do it," she interrupted. "Tonight, at the camp, you will indicate to me which star it is. Be accurate. I must divine the course of the future, the repercussions of taking you prisoner, what actions must be taken to ensure our continued successes. When you have made your calculations and are sure, call for me. I am the Seeress, Tributar."

She stalked back to her seat, clicking the strands of ivory nodules that festooned her scanty breechcloth. McCoy suppressed a shudder -- at close range he'd realized what the nodules were: humanoid teeth, torn from the mouths of her Nevarran victims.

Spock's cold hand drew his attention,

"Doctor, I do not know how much longer... that I can continue at the set pace," he said, sotto voice. "If it becomes necessary to leave me... you must do so."

McCoy continued to stare furiously at a rock, avoiding Spock's eyes.

"I can't," he said flatly. "They'd kill you."

"Likely," the Vulcan agreed. "But unless you are eager to die with me... you must do as I suggested."

McCoy groaned internally, knowing that Spock was right. Tributar the Seeress was not an ally, she was merely mildly curious. These people did not know mercy: they followed the whims of their very volatile passions.

"We'll see how things work out," he said finally.

The rear guard of the Kahseen party caught up with them, and Yeoman Schempp twisted out of the clutches of her escort, staggering into McCoy's surprised embrace. She was sobbing hysterically, and McCoy held her protectively, then sat down with her on the boulder, freeing an arm to reach for his hypospray. He hesitated. What to do for her? Obviously, she'd been raped: her uniform was in shreds, her face and limbs freshly bruised, and blood ran down her legs. To tranquilize her would dull her sense of horror. On the other hand, she might need a stimulant just to keep up with the party and stay alive.

"Nora, you'll be all right," he soothed, damning the suspicious Kahseens for destroying his medical tricorder. At least they'd permitted him his hypospray, though he knew its reservoirs were low. But what the yeoman needed, no drug he had could give her.

"Nora," he called. He had to shake her to get her full attention. "Nora, listen to me. I can help you, if you'll cooperate. I can use a -- a mental technique. Psychodynamic Hypnosis. It will help you to forget about what just happened. But you have to relax, and you have to trust me."

She didn't look at him, but between sobs, she agreed to try.

McCoy positioned her so that she faced him squarely, but so that he was facing away from Spock. He knew that the Vulcans considered Psychodynamic techniques highly unethical, since the suggestions given under those influences were compulsions so strong that an unethical minister of them might actually reverse the recipient's normal behavior. McCoy himself abhorred it, and the medical profession sanctioned its use only in the gravest necessity and under the strictest supervision. But McCoy knew how to do it, and he saw no alternative at the moment.

"Rest, Nora. Relax. You can trust me... you do trust me," he droned. He slipped the ring off of his little finger and held it up, twisting it before her eyes. "Watch the ring, now. Watch it."

Although he had seldom used the technique, McCoy was proficient in its use. He put Nora Schempp into a normal hypnotic trance within minutes. Then he made detailed suggestions to her to alter her rate of respiration, blood pressure, and pulse. She paled visibly as the doctor reached deeper into her subconscious. Her trance finally neared coma, and someone ignorant of what was happening might have thought she was going into shock.

Behind McCoy, the Kahseens watched curiously, but did not intrude on what to them must have appeared to be magic.

The doctor took the yeoman to the level of altered consciousness required to enforce select amnesia, and made the necessary suggestions. Then, with great care, he brought her slowly out of the trance. When she finally opened her eyes and regained full awareness, Nora Schempp's color had returned to normal, and the look of animal terror, pain and revulsion was gone from her eyes.

 _Until the next time_ , McCoy thought bitterly.

"I hurt," Nora muttered to no one in particular.

"They roughed you up a bit," McCoy answered smoothly, "but you'll be alright in no time. Here, let me give you a little pep-up. God knows when we'll get another rest."

He administered a mild stimulant.

The Kahseens were rising to resume the march. They gestured with their weapons for the prisoners to get going.

McCoy turned to help Spock to his feet, almost afraid to meet the Vulcan's eyes, half expecting a glare of moral outrage. But the Vulcan's expression hinted at weariness and no more.

"Yeoman, I need your help with Commander Spock," McCoy called. "Do you think you can support some of his weight?"

Between them, they got Spock up. McCoy took one of the Vulcan's arms, being careful of the crude splint, and they stepped onto the path again.

The little shuttlecraft rocked with a sudden broadside impact, momentarily cutting off the artificial gravity system and sending everyone careening into the wall. Uhura left McCoy's side, dropping the tricorder on which she'd been taping McCoy's recollections. The jolt had dragged McCoy out of the nightmare of memories into wide-awake reality, and he looked around in confusion while Nurse Chapel hauled him back into the seat and threw the safety straps across him.

"Kahseen raiders," Sulu announced needlessly. "They're on our starboard, coming fast."

Uhura scanned the sensors, taking the situation in at a glance.

"Evasive maneuvers, Sulu," she ordered.

"How far to that asteroid belt ahead at full impulse power?"

"Eight minutes at sublight 9.9," Sulu answered evenly. "Shall I go to Warp speed? They can't break the light barrier."

Uhura weighed the situation against her orders. To break the light barrier or to use the subspace radio might alert the Nevarran navy. Officially, the shuttlecraft wasn't specifically included in the embargo on the _Enterprise,_ but the diplomatic situation was too touchy to risk the Nevarrans' wrath unless there were no alternative. For the moment, there were still alternatives.

"Continue at maximum impulse velocity. We knew it could be dangerous when we volunteered to come," she said.

The craft rocked from a proximity burst. Uhura added more force to her stranglehold on the control panel.

"Let's make a run for the asteroid belt," she ordered. "Fly her straight, Mr. Sulu."

Sulu threw her a tight grin.

"Plan to play cat-and-mouse with them?" he commented.

Sulu's casual indifference to terror gave Uhura a shot of steadiness.

"Six minutes to the asteroid belt," she said. "They're falling back, maybe we can outrun them."

Another jolt rattled them.

"Auxiliary power diverting to shields," Sulu said, reaching across the board to compensate, but his hand never made it to the buttons.

With an incredible, eerie _shriek,_ the Kahseens' laser-cannon blitzed through the shuttlecraft, buckling the bulkhead like foil and superheating the air inside.

Even as Uhura began to pick herself up, another hit threw metal across the cabin. For a moment there was the deadly scream of an air leak, but the auto-seal came on before the pressure could drop radically.

Choking on the thin, heated air, Uhura had no thought but to save the lives entrusted to her. She unstrapped Sulu's limp form from the pilot's chair and engaged the Warp drive, but there was no response. The impulse drive was operational, but the helm seemed sluggish. She drove the shuttle in an erratic path, evading the Kahseen barrage as best she could. The Security chief managed to drag himself into the co-pilot's seat.

"Fuel's dropping," he shouted over the groans of the stressed hull. "Max speed is sublight 7.8. Life support is back up. Warp drive circuits nonfunctional. The stasis-seal on the hull is secure. Radio's out..."

They passed the first chunks of debris in the asteroid belt -- slowly tumbling bleached-white bones of a long dead planet, and thin breaths of drifting dust. Uhura wove a rabbit trail through it, hoping to make it into the thickly strewn up-plane region, where they might lose their pursuit. She could hear the chief still going over the instruments, and there were groans of injuries behind her, but she could not divide her attention as she veered in tight arcs and shot off on mad vectors through the maze of debris. She knew the shields were at least marginally functional; she just aimed to miss the big chunks.

Then they were into the up-plane region, and Uhura glanced at the screens. The two Kahseen raiders were out of sight, at least for the moment. She selected a planetoid large enough to make a safe harbor, and cut the drive, letting the shuttle drift into its inky-black shadow. Braking, she set down on the uneven surface, which afforded a tiny but sufficient gravity.

 _They won't expect us to land,_ she thought. _I hope._

She turned around, then, to assess the injuries. Doctor M'Benga was functional, kneeling over Sulu's prostrate form, but his head poured blood into his eyes, and Chapel was tying a strip of bandaging across his forehead. She seemed unhurt. So did McCoy, who sat, dazed, in the seat where she'd left him. The Security mate was unconscious. Uhura glanced at the chief beside her, and he was holding his side, but he gave her a crooked grin and a thumbs-up gesture.

"Can you repair the Warp drive circuits?" she asked him.

"I'm not much of an engineer, sir," he admitted ruefully.

Uhura shook her head in an attempt to exorcise the abysmal buzz in it. She checked the pilot's panel again, but she knew what she'd see: the impulse drive reactor was almost completely shut down. There wouldn't be enough fuel to reach the _Enterprise._ She sighed and switched off everything but life-support and the sensor panel. The fewer power emanations, the less likely they were to be spotted by their enemies.

"Post yourself at the sensor board," she told the chief, "and keep a sharp eye for the Kahseens. I can't do anything for the engines, but I'm familiar with the communications equipment, so I'll work on that."

McCoy had a dream, but it was more like an hallucination, for his eyes were open and he knew where he was: strapped into a seat on the _Galileo._ But his mind was enthralled in the long tunnel of memories whose doors he'd begun to open, and he knew it was an effect of withdrawal. He was losing his tenuous grip on reality, unable to disentangle himself from the demanding past. He was aboard the shuttlecraft, and yet he was at the Kahseen base, as though he'd never escaped. He fought the hallucination, fought it, but it was insistent, powerful, he was losing…

"Where is the Vulcan!" Obati screamed again, her tattooed face a visage out of a nightmare, the face of the ancient Medusa, promising death. She struck the slender human until the man sagged.

"I don't -- know," McCoy gasped painfully. After a moment he dared to open his eyes to face his captors. "I can't remember. It's all a blank."

Obati turned her rage momentarily on the Kahseen troopers who held McCoy up, questioning them in the native language that McCoy couldn't understand. They answered at length, and even in their alien tongue, their voices betrayed anger and disgust. The Obati reached over, then, and cupped McCoy's chin in her huge, four-fingered hand.

"My hunters tell me that you were alone in the hover-car you stole," she said in Nevarran. "What made you think you could escape us?"

McCoy remained silent.

"The Vulcan, Spock, is gone. Clearly you took him with you, his green blood is fresh on your shirt. Where did you take him?"

McCoy licked at the blood on his lips.

"I don't remember," he whispered, bracing himself for more blows.

Instead, Obati shoved him onto a bench and sat opposite him, composing her brutish face into an approximation of sympathy.

"You are angry with us because you blame Nedzetler for killing your woman," she said, her voice toned with reasonableness. "It was not our fault that she took her own life. She was an hysteric. She was weak-minded."

McCoy was not deceived; this was not compassion, or even reasonableness, it was ill-disguised trickery.

"The yeoman killed herself because you gave her to your flunkies for a sex toy!" he grated.

Obati smiled patiently, thoughtfully running her fingers through her short-cropped orangey hair.

"The woman could serve no other use here," she said evenly. "We are mobilized in a holy war, there are no places for... ornaments . But you have nothing to fear from us: you are a physician and a scientist, and can teach us much. Your Vulcan officer would be equally valued."

"Anything we'd give you would be used to terrorize the rest of this solar system," McCoy accused, anger replacing his fear.

The Kahseen General shrugged.

"What applications we might make are not of your concern. Concern yourself, rather, with staying _alive_. Consider your Vulcan friend, who was seriously injured and requires your professional attention. Do not deceive yourself that he will find aid on this planet; there are no Nevarran sympathizers here. Reveal to us where you have hidden the man so we can bring him to you. I repeat, you need not fear our -- chastisement -- so long as you are cooperative."

McCoy let his outrage get the better of him.

"I will never cooperate with you!" he swore. " I am a doctor, not a pawn in your disgusting program. I will use every opportunity to escape you, so long as there's life in me!"

Obati grabbed him by the throat and thrust her chin up to his face.

"Your life!" she hissed. "If I did not think that it would kill a weakling like you, I would have both your feet cut off! How far would you run then, starship doctor?"

McCoy closed his eyes against this goddess of wrath.

Her patience expended, Obati threw McCoy bodily against the stone wall.

"We have ways to buy you, you stubborn fool," she warned. "Perhaps blows will not bend you, but we can make you sell us your soul!"

She turned to the aides behind her .

"Get Tributar," she ordered.

''What about the Vulcan?" one giant asked.

Obati frowned.

"Continue the search, and we shall see what information Tributar can squeeze from the physician. I begin to suspect, however, that we will not find the Vulcan, or will find him dead."

Nedzetler glared across the cavern where McCoy was trying to pick himself up. The Kahseen's head still throbbed from the knockout shot McCoy had given him during the escape attempt. He bore the human even less goodwill than the others.

"We should kill the physician, too, and wipe our hands of the Federation," he insisted.

"I did not ask your opinion," Obati snapped. "He can be useful to us, and we already risk the anger of the powerful Federation. We may need a live hostage. You think too much of killing, Nedzetler. Your wastefulness has always been one of your poorer attributes."

McCoy heard the conversation as it echoed around the stone chamber, but only the tones had meaning to him, voices full of murder. He rubbed the back of his skull and waited for the room to slow its sickening spinning. The prickling lessened in his extremities, and he managed to sit up.

He trembled internally, wondering why he couldn't recall what actually had become of Spock. Not that he really wanted to: he knew the Kahseens could eventually force him to tell them whatever he might remember. What frightened him, rather, was a growing suspicion that he was affected by hysterical amnesia -- that something so terrible had happened to the Vulcan -- or been made to happen -- that his mind had blocked it out of his consciousness. He looked down at his hands, still stained in the creases with dried green blood. _Have I killed?_ he wondered, anguished.

The Kahseen messenger returned with Tributar, the huge demoness who served as Astrologer and Quartermaster, who had shared water with McCoy and Spock on the trail to this place. She gave McCoy a perfunctory glance of recognition, then frowned, turning to Obati.

"We do not know how different a Terran's body chemistry might be," she said. "I advise against the drug."

"He used his drugs on our wounded without adverse effects," Obati said. "I suspect there are basic similarities. The risk is necessary."

"He is small," Tributar complained. "I am uncertain about how much to give him."

The General handed her a vial, glistening azure-blue in the gaslight.

"I want him cooperative -- and addicted -- as soon as possible," she ordered.

"You don't want him dead, do you?" the Seeress laughed. She produced a hypodermic needle and filled the syringe half-full of the thick blue liquid.

"Hold him, Nedzetler," she commanded, smiling. "I don't want him to break the needle in struggling."

The savage twined his arms around the doctor and easily immobilized him.

"You will not die, little man," Nedzetler gloated, "but you will wish that you could."

McCoy made to shrink from Tributar's touch as she stripped back his sleeve. She continued to smile serenely.

"You have tiny veins." she commented, slipping the thick needle expertly into McCoy's arm at the inside of his elbow.

"What is this?!" McCoy gasped.

"It is called 'blue bondage'," she said sweetly. "Some find it pleasant."

"It's -- addictive?"

"It does not kill unless you are deprived of it," she confirmed. She saw the drug begin to take him: his eyes glassed over and his jaw went slack.

"You can release him now," she told Nedzetler. "He is quite helpless."

McCoy was helpless. He shivered, fighting against a horrible sensation of drowning, against the swirling blackness that whirl-pooled in from the edges of his vision. He felt himself collapse back against the wall as a flood of ice water poured into his chest, then up his arteries into his brain. He heard himself whimpering, but his voice, the other sounds, were becoming disjointed echoes in an empty, dismal cathedral that stretched into infinity.

Someone was saying, "Three injections each day for five days..."

Then Nedzetler's face loomed very near, painted with snakes and demons, writhing with hatred, and there was the dim sensation of being lifted, and pain, and a voice, but whose, he did not know. It may have been his own.

"Your Spock is dead," the voice laughed at him. "He is dead. We found him and he is dead. You killed him and he is dead. You yourself killed him. And he is dead. Is dead..."

He thought he saw the insect mound where the Kahseens laid their dead. There were corpses. One seemed familiar. There were scuttering insects tearing at Spock's dead face. McCoy screamed. He screamed for five days.

Captain Kirk stood silently in the corridor outside the depressurized Hangar deck as the _Galileo_ disengaged itself from the Nevarran tow-ships and docked under its own meager power. The captain gazed grimly through the port, scanning the wide scorches and pitted metal scars left by the Kahseen weapons. The Hangar portals sealed and the deck began to repressurize to permit the debarking of the shuttlecraft's crew.

Ambassador Hunth pulled Kirk aside, out of the way of the assembling medical team.

"Your people are very efficient," Hunth commented.

" _Your_ people are very efficient," Kirk echoed, tucking his anxiety away. I'm grateful for your navy's getting my shuttlecraft out of a tight spot. And for your getting _me_ out of a tighter one," he added ruefully.

Hunth's smile acknowledged his victory over the fears of the Leda-Nevarre Assemblies.

"The Assemblies' change of attitude was largely attributable to your suggestion that I take your Lieutenant Walking Bear to the hearings. The council members were impressed by the Lieutenant's assertions regarding those unfortunate incidents in the history of Terra relating to the oppression of his ancestors, and the subsequent cultural victories gained by his peoples to preserve their identities and still integrate with a society of affluence," the ambassador claimed. "We see in such successes elsewhere a possible key to our own problems with the Kahseens; perhaps it might even be possible, if alliance with the Federation becomes a reality, that members of your -- Indian? -- yes, Indian humans might become mediators between the Kahseens and Leda-Nevarre."

"Even so," Kirk said, "there could have been hell to pay when the Assemblies found out that I'd sent a shuttlecraft after my missing crew members, after they'd specifically forbidden any negotiations with the Kahseens."

Hunth put an affectionate hand on Kirk's back.

"James, the council members were, I believe, actually relieved. No one really _wanted_ to leave Dr. McCoy with the Kahseens; rather, they were at a loss as to how to go about an exchange without risking other lives. When you took the initiative and executed it so creatively, you solved the dilemma neatly. I only wish we had been able to assist your people before the Kahseen raiders crippled your shuttlecraft and injured its passengers."

The depressurization light winked out and the medical team pushed through the unsealed doors. The hatch on the _Galileo_ had to be pried open, and then Uhura stepped out supporting a banged-up but mobile Sulu. She surrendered him to the medics and was jostled aside as the other injured were retrieved: the two security men, M'Benga, Nurse Chapel... McCoy... but no one else. _Good God, where was Spock?!_ A pain in Kirk's gut threatened to double him over. He took a long, deliberate breath and went to Uhura's side, putting an arm around her shoulder to steady her.

"I'm relieved to see you, Lieutenant," he managed. "Are you alright?"

"Yes, sir, I think so," she said shakily. "I couldn't get the subspace channels working, and there wasn't enough fuel to make the _Enterprise,_ so I called Nevarre for assistance. I hope I didn't get us in too much trouble, Captain. I didn't see any other choice."

"You did yourself proud, Lieutenant," Kirk assured her, but his attention was on the clutch of medics who were lowering McCoy's rigid, sweating form onto a cart.

Uhura could not see Kirk's face, but she told him.

"The Kahseens drugged him. He's in some kind of withdrawal."

Kirk hesitated before asking the urgent question.

"No word of of Mr. Spock or Yeoman Schempp?"

"No sir," Uhura murmured. "Nothing."

The captain handed Uhura to Hunth.

"Go to Sickbay and have yourself checked over, Lieutenant," he ordered dully. "We'll have a debriefing later."

"Come, dear lady, I'll walk with you," Hunth offered, and led her toward the corridor.

Kirk stood watching as McCoy fought feebly at the orderlies holding him down on the cart, trying to bind him. The captain surrendered, then, to a portion of anguish, and went over to look at the survivor, the friend who'd been imprisoned in some kind of gehenna for four months. Drugged! The man looked like he'd been pushed far beyond the limits of sanity. After a moment, Kirk turned away to stare across the Hangar deck. He stayed there until everyone had gone, and only the sounds made by the damage control team inside the _Galileo_ invaded the silence.

Eventually, he felt a presence behind him. It was Scotty. The engineer's face was a study in wretchedness.

"I feel the need o' a drink, Captain," he said gently. "Would ye care t' join me in my quarters for a short one?"

Kirk pulled himself together.

"Thanks, Scotty. but I'm still on duty," he said reluctantly, and he thought: _Duty! When is a captain ever not on duty? When will there be time for just the man_?

The flicker of images on the screen dissolved and the psychotricorder tape ended. Kirk stared numbly at the now-blank screen, trying to shake off the horror of the regressive memory scan he'd just watched. It was like living McCoy's entire one-hundred-and-twelve day ordeal in an hour, all that the man had endured, condensed and neatly sorted into essentials and events, and displayed like a speeded up holographic play presented in the first person.

Doctor M'Benga's voice slashed through the silence.

"That's it, except for the amnesic gap," he reported. "He could fill that in, too, if we use the psychotricorder at a deeper setting, but I don't recommend it."

Kirk's mind came out of shock and the full impact hit him: McCoy had killed Spock, had murdered him at some point during an attempted escape from the Kahseens, but the actual details were missing from the record.

"Why would McCoy... kill... Spock?" Kirk groaned. "I can't believe it. The men were friends!"

M'Benga's sable-toned skin contrasted startlingly with the paper-white bandage around his head, and he was dead tired. He peered across the still-darkened M.O.'s office to study the captain's drawn expression, and wondered, _How can I tell him this_?

"I submit, sir, that in most circumstances, Dr. McCoy could not be induced to harm any sentient being even at the peril of his own life. But as the psychotricorder has graphically shown us, Commander Spock was near death already. His recapture by the Kahseens would most certainly have resulted in his eventual death by torture. When Dr. McCoy discovered that there were no spacecraft on Liss in which to continue their flight, he realized that recapture was inevitable. It is possible, under those extreme conditions, that if the doctor put an end to Commander Spock's life, it was euthanasia -- a mercy killing."

Kirk stared at M'Benga, trying to imagine it. _Could McCoy do such a thing_?

"The man who left this ship with Spock and the others -- I knew that man," Kirk said emphatically. "He was no killer, not even in some supposed mercy."

The handsome Yoruban doctor rose wearily and brightened the room lights again.

"The fact remains that Spock is dead, and McCoy believes that he killed him by his own hand," M'Benga said quietly.

Kirk shunted horror aside. _Grapple with priorities,_ he told himself.

"What about the amnesic gap? You said you could probe it. Why is it dangerous?" he demanded.

M'Benga frowned.

"On a deeper probe, the psychotricorder will make his _conscious_ mind aware of what happened," the doctor said. "It could turn his very weak will to live into a very strong death wish."

"You mean drive him mad?"

"Suicidal, Captain. The man can't remember the details because he can't face the memory. If you force him to..."

Kirk nodded and dropped his head. He realized that he was sitting at McCoy's own desk. He looked around at the room as though he were seeing it again after a long absence. M'Benga had been using the office while McCoy had been gone, but it was little changed, and the clutter on McCoy's own desk was untouched. One of McCoy's prize hobby roses sat in dessicated ruin in the test tube in which it had been tucked at the time the doctor had beamed down to Nevarre. Its faded, mummified petals were the embodiment of desolation. On an impulse, Kirk reached out and touched it. It fell apart.

"What happens now?" the captain asked dismally. "What about the drug? Will he live?"

M'Benga shrugged, massaging a kink in his neck.

"We compared notes with the Nevarran Surgeon General. The drug the Kahseens kept McCoy on is known locally as -- roughly translated -- 'blue slavery'. Very descriptive. It's not in common use on Nevarre, but the Nevarrans sent us some and Doctor McCoy's condition is stabilized. We can synthesize our own supply for him now, but he's thoroughly addicted and it's going to take time to cure him. We'll reduce the dosage gradually, and we can counteract the craving, and most of the pain, with other drugs. He should be off it entirely in six to eight weeks."

Kirk sighed, suddenly wanting to escape the Medical Officer's office. The place had taken on the emotional association of a mortuary.

"Knowing Bones, work would be the best therapy for him. How long before he can resume his duties?"

M'Benga's face went blank with surprise.

"Captain, don't you know? No physician who's been implicated in a case of euthanasia can serve on a starship. He can't practice medicine anywhere in the Federation."

It was 'night' on the _Enterprise,_ and the duty crew went about their business quietly. Kirk bade the Nevarran ambassador good-night and saw him twinkle out on the transporter platform, beaming down to his home on Nevarre. Hunth had turned to him before stepping up on the platform, and had told him, "Tomorrow is another day." The phrase seemed a universal attempt to comfort and reassure, and Kirk had returned the ambassador's gentle smile, but with Hunth's warm presence removed, the gloom returned.

Kirk went to his cabin and sat down at the desk to log his Captain's Day Report, but he couldn't collect his thoughts. Tomorrow, "another day," the _Enterprise_ would beam down the last of the equipment consignment to prepare for the first official Federation embassy on Nevarre. It would be the beginning of a new broadening for the Leda-Nevarrans, the end of another assignment for the _Enterprise._ Twenty-two days of routine cruising, and they'd be back to Starbase Fourteen for a new mission. Twenty-two days, and Kirk would be assigned a new ship's Geophysicist, a new Science Yeoman, a new Science Officer, and a new Chief Surgeon -- unless Thuau M'Benga were promoted, which wasn't likely.

And McCoy? -- what would happen to him? He'd be taken to a Starfleet psychiatric hospital, but what then? They wouldn't bring him to trial for murder on so little evidence, but he'd likely be dismissed from the Service and disqualified from practicing the profession to which he'd devoted his life.

Restless, Kirk rose from his desk and went out into the corridor, roaming the near-empty decks. _How do I know I wouldn't have done the same thing?_ he agonized. _If there were no hope, and only pain, wouldn't I have put my friend beyond harm?_

He didn't know. He could not honestly say what he might have done. But he was sure now that he held no animosity, no disaffection for McCoy. He wanted, suddenly, to see the man very badly, to see if he could stir some vestige of "Bones" McCoy out of that pathetic victim. But he checked himself, remembering M'Benga's advice: "Stay away from him until he asks for you -- he's got serious emotional and physical readjustments to make before he can face you. We can lick everything but his sense of guilt; he's got to wrestle that alone."

That left no distraction from the other pain that Kirk had been trying so long and so diligently to suppress. He wasn't surprised to find himself in the corridor outside Spock's quarters. He hesitated only a moment before going inside. The door slid shut behind him and the lights came on automatically, set dim as Spock liked them.

Kirk looked glumly around the room at the sparse, alien decorations, the neatly made bed, the orderly arrangement of articles on the desk. The Vulcan lyre hung securely on its special rack on the wall. The flame in the firepot still glowed faintly. Yet for all the emphatic Vulcan-ness of the room, its most evident feature was its emptiness. _The place was sick with the absence of Spock._

The fullness of realization swept through the captain, then, and he gave in, let himself sink into the chair, let the pain overwhelm him. Let the tears come.

After a long while, he stepped back into the corridor and went to his own cabin, grateful that the halls were empty of curious eyes.

Kirk was by habit a light sleeper, and he woke immediately at the tap on his door. Groaning under his breath, he grabbed at his clothes and waved his hand over the light switch, then blinked against the glare, getting up. His clock read 0310.

The tap came again, and Kirk wondered, _Who the hell?_ He yanked on his trousers. "Come in, come in," he barked.

The door whisked open, and a pale apparition stood framed in it.

Kirk recovered his wits and rushed to support McCoy before the man could fall. He led him to the bed and eased him down, then reached for the intercom to call Sickbay, but McCoy caught his arm.

"Jim --" he rasped. "Wait."

Kirk hesitated at the tone of supplication. He dropped his hand and pulled the desk chair over, sitting facing McCoy, wondering why the doctor had come, but not knowing what to say to him. He decided to try a light touch.

"Since when do my officers run around the ship in their nightgowns?" he said, trying to put ten years of affection into his voice.

McCoy's wan, wasted face lost a little of its dead look, but he did not smile. Kirk realized that Bones was holding himself together with a supreme effort of will, and he wondered how McCoy had managed to escape from Sickbay -- where he'd surely been watched -- and make it as far as the captain's quarters. McCoy had been cleaned up since Kirk had seen him on the Hangar deck, but he still looked wretched: gaunt, sick and ready to collapse. His hair was still uncut, but someone had combed out the knots and washed out the filth. There were new streaks of grey there.

The doctor pulled a heavy tricorder from under his long, shapeless hospital robe. Kirk recognized it: it was the specially calibrated psychotricorder, the device that could probe the memory, even the subconsciously repressed memory.

McCoy laid it shakily on the table next to the bed.

"I set it... fifth level," he said carefully. "That's the bottom."

He turned again to Kirk, and his eyes held a terrible purpose.

"I have to know," he said.

Kirk was suddenly cold with fear: McCoy wanted to probe his own hysterical amnesia. It would likely destroy what little was left of him.

"You realize what you can do to yourself?" Kirk said quietly. "It might be better _not_ to know."

McCoy shook his head.

"I want to remember," he breathed. "Maybe I'm ... innocent."

There _was_ that possibility, but it was remote. Kirk reached for the intercom button again, but McCoy clung to him.

"Jim... please," he begged.

"Bones, I can't help you -- I don't even know how to use this thing," he said gently, putting his hand on the psychotricorder. "Let me call M'Benga or someone. If you insist on doing this, at least let's have a professional on hand. I don't want us to be here, alone, if something goes wrong."

McCoy bit his lower lip, as though it were an effort to think, but then he nodded.

"Christine Chapel," he said. "No one else."

Kirk punched the intercom button and called the nurse. She arrived posthaste and didn't seem very surprised to find McCoy there. _That's how he got out of Sickbay,_ Kirk realized angrily, and he knew what stake Christine Chapel had in this: she had loved Spock. Kirk threw her an angry look, but the nurse had retreated into herself.

"All right, Doctor McCoy, the probe is set and ready to run,"Christine said, her fingers on the instrument. "Think about your escape attempt, picking up with some event you can remember clearly."

McCoy nodded, and the nurse switched on the device. McCoy winced.

"It's hurting him," Kirk whispered urgently. "Turn it off."

She did so. McCoy shook his head painfully and glanced at Kirk.

"Why -- why did you do that?" he asked shakily. He looked bewildered.

"You were suffering," Kirk explained. "I don't want you to do this, Bones." _Not even at the cost of never knowing what became o f Spock._

McCoy sighed raggedly.

"Yes, it hurts," he admitted. "The probe is very deep. But I'll be alright, Captain. I'm not... afraid of pain anymore. Turn it on, Christine."

The psychotricorder hummed, and the doctor flinched as the beam sifted his subconscious mind.

Kirk watched him worriedly. The man's features flowed with expressions: pain, terror, cunning, panic, compassion, grief... After five minutes he was drenched with sweat. Kirk reached over and took one trembling hand, and McCoy's thin fingers curled around his in a painful grip.

The psychotricorder continued to hum, forcibly dredging up the repressed past. At fifteen minutes, McCoy looked ready to disintegrate. Abruptly, he put his hands to his face and sobbed. Kirk caught him as he collapsed forward, and Nurse Chapel scrambled to disengage the machine. Kirk held McCoy's emaciated body as the doctor wept, and tried to soothe him, but McCoy lifted his head with an effort and looked into Kirk's eyes with unmistakable _elation._

 _Has he gone mad?_ Kirk wondered fearfully.

"Spock may... still be alive!" McCoy laughed, tears streaming down his cheeks. He was weeping with joy!

Kirk's mind reeled with reawakened hopefulness. He looked over at Christine, at her startled face, then felt McCoy go limp in his arms. Christine checked him quickly, but McCoy was only asleep, exhausted by the ordeal of the probe. Kirk hugged him with tender, thankful affection.

"Nurse, get that tape processed and let's find out what made this man laugh," he said.

Doctor McCoy stood in the dusty clearing under the brush-camouflaged roof of the hospital hut, and he swatted the flies away from the wounded Kahseen he was tending, but his mind was on the first encouraging thing he'd seen since his capture: across the field, hidden away under nets and leaves, was a hover-car. The Kahseens had few of them, for each one had to be stolen from the Nevarrans and maintained with considerable difficulty; but the Kahseen General Obati had one, and she had arrived that day to question the Federation captives.

McCoy glanced up at the glowing pink of the lightly overcast sky, and he knew that night was soon to come. He finished with the Kahseen patient and stooped to climb the ladder into the underground warrens. He ignored the gruesome guard who never left his side, and using one of the always burning gas lamps, he followed the dripping stone passages to the stuffy cell where Spock was being kept. When the guard protested in rude Nevarran, McCoy gave him a timeworn Terran gesture, but the obscenity was apparently unknown.

The doctor hung the lamp over the heap of damp straw where Spock lay, and put his hand on the Vulcan's searing forehead to gauge the progress of the infection. Spock opened his eyes at the touch and tried to sit up, but McCoy held him down.

"Lie still, Spock, getting up will only make you dizzy," he warned in English. "Are you feeling any better"?

Spock was having trouble keeping his eyes focused.

"I am... not improved," he croaked.

"If these damned savages would let you alone, do you think you could still cure yourself using the Vulcan healing trance?" McCoy asked quietly.

Spock looked pained.

"As they have not previously, I do not believe... that they will 'let me alone','" he breathed. "Your question is... superfluous."

"Spock, there's a hover-car across the field from the hospital hut," McCoy confided urgently. "Obati came in it. Now, I've thought this out: the hypospray is out of antibiotics, damn it, but I think I've still got enough sedatives to get us out of here. If we can get back to the Kahseens' spaceport, using the hovercraft we might be able to steal a scout ship, get off this godforsaken planet, and make it to a Nevarran outpost on Leda."

The Vulcan seemed to brighten with interest.

"You must take Yeoman Schempp and attempt it," he insisted. "It may be your only opportunity."

"I'm taking you. Yeoman Schempp is dead."

The bitterness in McCoy's voice carried across to the Vulcan. He was silent for a time.

Sighing, McCoy lifted Spock's sweaty head onto his knees and helped him drink some water, then wet a scrap of blanket and wiped the Vulcan's face and wrists to cool them.

"I will hold you back... you must go alone," Spock insisted feverishly. McCoy allowed himself an internal smile.

"Let's not play those logic games with each other, now, Spock," he told the Vulcan with gruff affection. "We'll probably both be dead soon."

Spock did not reply.

The doctor, though, was eyeing the guard, who stood in frustrated silence just outside the cell. McCoy had already determined that the brute was less than bright: he was the perfect patsy.

"If we don't get Mr. Spock into some fresh air, he's going to die," McCoy shouted at the guard in Nevarran.

The monster just blinked.

"Well, I can't lift him!" McCoy bellowed." Do you want General Obati to find out that a valuable prisoner died because you were too stupid to take him out of the heat?"

The guard shuffled forward a few steps and peered at Spock's prostrate form. He regarded McCoy suspiciously.

"Permission must be gotten," the Kahseen rumbled, turning to call a messenger.

"That will take too long!" McCoy snapped. "Can't you see the man's suffocating?"

Spock indeed seemed strained for breath.

The guard hesitated, then crossed the remainder of the cell and scooped the Vulcan up lightly. "Where should he be taken?"

"Outside, under the hospital ramada," McCoy ordered. "Be careful with him, he has a broken arm."

They climbed up into the sticky-hot breeze, but it was a relief from the humid furnace of the warrens. Night was descending rapidly, and the planet Nevarre hung like a white jewel over the last glow of sunset. McCoy decided it was a good omen, but just then, another Kahseen form loomed.

"What are these prisoners doing out of their cells?" Nedzetler's unmistakable voice demanded.

Then things began to happen very quickly. Before the guard could answer, Spock reached up with his good arm and caught the guard's neck in a nerve pinch. McCoy scrambled for his hypospray, felling Nedzetler with an ample dose of anesthetic. Both Kahseens fell without a cry.

"Now we're going to catch hell, "McCoy hissed, rolling the collapsed guard off of Spock. He threw his arm around the Vulcan's waist and helped him up, then hauled him as quickly and silently as he could across the wide clearing, seeing other dim silhouettes in the deepening gloom, but hearing no calls of alarm. The night disguised them. McCoy boosted Spock into the hovercraft's passenger seat and clambered over him, yanking the camouflage net back from the windshield bubble.

A sudden hubbub of voices erupted opposite the clearing by the hospital ramada as McCoy engaged the car's drive. He thanked his guardian angel when the car hummed to life, then rose smoothly. He'd driven a similar vehicle on Nevarre, and he prayed silently that this one would respond as well.

The confusion on the ground had become screams of rage, but McCoy guided the car acutely upwards and cleared the trees, out of sight of the camp. It had been almost too easy! Elated, he steered due east, toward the hidden spaceport where he'd first disembarked on the planet. He knew that any immediate pursuit would have to be on foot -- there were no other hovercraft at the Kahseen base.

But elation dissolved into blackest despair upon approaching the concealed spaceport: the enormous umbrellas of trees hung over empty landing pads. There were no ships; they were all in space, or at another port. McCoy had no idea where another port might be. Likely, it was halfway around the planet, far beyond the range of his stolen hover-car.

He landed the vehicle a discreet distance from the site, then crawled over to discuss the alternatives with Spock. But Spock lay in a limp heap in the seat A fist of fear tightened in McCoy's chest, and he fumbled in the dark for signs of life: the Vulcan still breathed, but was thoroughly unconscious. McCoy moaned, hoping Spock had gone into the healing trance, and not into a coma. He cut the power in the car and sat back in the padded seat to consider the situation.

Getting off the planet was effectively impossible. Finding help was equally unlikely -- the Kahseens controlled this entire world. He could hope to evade capture for a while, until the Kahseens mobilized, but the hover-car had a limited fuel supply, and the Kahseens knew the terrain, he didn't; they would find him, sooner or later.

He reached across and touched Spock's cheek again, gauging the rampant fever of infection. If the Kahseens got hold of Spock now, they wouldn't believe anything like a "healing trance," they would probably execute the Vulcan immediately. Even if they did let him live until he was recovered, he would eventually die even harder, for he would never give them the scientific and weapons knowledge they wanted of him.

 _They might not kill me right away_ , McCoy guessed. They're too damned interested in biological warfare. They want to pick my brain.

With Spock, he realized he could do one of three things: he could give themselves up; he could kill the Vulcan himself, here -- save him from inevitable torture -- then run, or suicide himself; or he could hide Spock somewhere, hoping the Vulcan would eventually bring himself out of his trance, while he, McCoy, played the decoy to draw the Kahseens away.

To surrender was against all his instincts, his training, and his sense of duty. There was no way he could make that choice.

Though he knew that the second choice, a shot of poison, might be the kindest death, his mind simply backed away blackly from it.

The last choice was a poor best. But there was one place where the Kahseens wouldn't go -- at least not most of them. If he left Spock there and took the hovercraft elsewhere, the Vulcan would at least have a small chance for survival.

McCoy climbed back into the operator's seat and lifted off, increasing the altitude until he could see across a hundred kilometers of dimly moon-lit scenery. Everywhere below was wilderness, though he knew there were many Kahseen bases carefully hidden from aerial detection. Far off on the tilting horizon, a great gorge was vaguely defined by the inky inner shadows of its sheer rock walls -- the place the superstitious Kahseens feared -- the place where he'd seen dinosaur-like beasts roaming in the canyon. McCoy leaned the car into an arc, heading for that uncertain haven.

I'll find a cave or something, away from the animals, to hide Spock, he decided. I'll leave him the hypospray, set on a stimulant, to help him pull himself out of the trance if he can. Then I'll take this car as far away as it will go, so the smart Kahseens like Obati won't suspect.

As he dipped down into the deep shadows under the rim of the cliffs, he didn't dare to turn on the vehicle's lights. He hovered just below the precipice until his eyes adjusted, wishing he had a Vulcan's night vision. Then, slowly, he scouted among the cliffs until he came to the narrowed end of the canyon many kilometers down the valley from the Kahseen footbridge he'd crossed a few days before. He squinted in the murky light, seeing a natural arch in the rock wall formed by the fall of part of the cliff. There was a difficult climb up a talus slope from the canyon floor, and the little hollow under the arch was not readily visible from the rim above: ideal. No large animals could climb the talus, and Spock could get down once he was recovered. Of course, he'd probably be trapped in the gorge, but at least he'd be alive and out of the clutches of the Kahseens.

McCoy set the craft down on a house-sized boulder near the top of the talus, and dragged Spock out of the vehicle. The light was terrible and the climbing was tricky. McCoy groaned under the double burden of Spock's slack body and the planet's exhausting gravity. A bevy of bird-like animals complained and vacated the underhang where the doctor finally laid Spock. Then he let himself sprawl on the little shelf, trying to catch his breath and collect his thoughts. He wiped his hands on his uniform shirt, recognizing the stickiness: Spock's blood. After a while, he sat up and checked the Vulcan's fever, then fumbled with his hypospray to set it for coradrenalin.

A dreadful thought struck him. When the Kahseens recaptured him -- and he had no doubt that they would -- they would force him to tell them where Spock was. The doctor had not had Command Conditioning, like Starfleet Academy graduates, nor did he have Spock's Vulcan strengths; he knew he could ultimately be made to talk, regardless of his determination and strength of will.

He considered staying in the gorge with Spock, but there was no way to hide the hover-car from the sensor scans that the Kahseens were sure to make. They'd be located, and educated Kahseens like Obati would have no qualms about going into the "forbidden place" to retrieve them.

 _When I leave, he decided, I've got to get good and far from here and then stop and doublethink myself into forgetting about Spock. Psychodynamic Hypnosis might work. I've read of instances where it was successfully self-administered. Tricky business, but I ought to be able to make the technique work on myself. I must_ _make it work. If I can convince myself that Spock's already dead, then I won't need to think about where I might have left him. And the damned Kahseens won't find Spock, no matter what they do to me!_

The _Enterprise_ established orbit around Liss, and no Kahseen raiders appeared to challenge the heavily-armed starship. A landing party beamed down into an eerie, thirty-kilometer-long canyon, walled in on all sides by unscalable rock cliffs that widened and narrowed to make broad vales or narrow gorges. No river ran through the canyon floor to gouge out channels anymore, but there were geysers and hot springs and fumaroles, and the flora was lushly tropical, though on the mesa above, autumn was well advanced.

"It isn't surprising that primitive fauna could survive in this environment," the ship's exobiologist reported. "The configuration of the canyon walls, combined with the geothermal activity on the canyon floor, create a functional greenhouse effect. The animals themselves were probably trapped here eons ago, when their species were common across the planet."

Captain Kirk gestured for the man to hush, and pointed at the rustling bushes across the steaming swamp from them. The creature came into view: gigantic, brownish, reptilian. It looked as though it could swallow a human whole. Instead, it munched around in the swamp and came up with a maw full of dripping weeds. It blinked placidly, ignoring the men, and kept eating.

Kirk swallowed, then gestured down the canyon.

"McCoy flew in over that cliff," he said. "Let's look down there. Keep your phasers ready, but don't shoot unless ordered.

They sloshed through the mucky grasses, batting at the clouds of gnats that rushed them instantly. Their motions released bubbles of awful-smelling gases in the mud under their feet.

Kirk wondered to himself what they were likely to find, if anything. For what should he brace himself? Would there be bones, scraps of uniform? The hypospray? A wasted ghost of a man? A hopeless lunatic?

"Are you gentlemen looking for me?" a voice said softly from above Kirk's head.

Kirk galvanized with surprise, then shot a glance into the branches over his head. Perched comfortably on a limb, Spock's sun-darkened, healthy, _au naturel_ body looked like a sleek, lazing jungle cat. There was a hint of a beard, and the long black hair was pulled back into a braid and tied with grasses, but there was no mistaking him.

"Spock!" Kirk whooped. "It's you!"

"Indeed, Captain," the Vulcan answered mildly. One eyebrow lifted in clinical interest. "Whom else were you expecting?"

The First Officer sat dutifully on the diagnostic bed in Sickbay while Doctor M'Benga examined him, but Spock seemed distracted. M'Benga made one final sweep with his mediscan, and handed Spock a uniform shirt.

"You could use some plastic surgery on those burn scars, if you wish," the doctor told him, "but your arm healed straight and you are amazingly fit."

"We were afraid the 'dinosaurs' had eaten you," Kirk added lightly. Spock regarded the captain curiously, then pulled on his shirt.

"With very few exceptions, the creatures of the gorge were herbivorous," Spock told him. "I was in little danger. In fact, I found the place quite restful."

"Doctor McCoy will be glad to hear that," Nurse Chapel commented. "He was afraid he was taking you out of the frying pan and putting you into the fire. So to speak."

Spock turned and looked at her, his face solemn, but his thoughts were clearly elsewhere.

"Where _is_ Doctor McCoy?" he asked quietly. He turned to Kirk. "From your description, I would have expected the doctor to be confined here in Sickbay."

Kirk pursed his lips, then shook his head.

"No. He's well enough now to stay in his own quarters as long as he gets a regular dose of the drug," Kirk said.

Spock pulled himself up very straight.

"Shall I return to duty now, sir?" he asked formally.

Kirk glanced at M'Benga, who shrugged. He studied his First Officer again. There was a new remoteness in Spock which worried him. It wasn't the usual Vulcan coolness, it was something... different. Kirk didn't like it.

"No," he decided. "Not yet. I want you to... reorient yourself for a while, Mr. Spock. Catch up on what's been happening. Mix with people again."

"-- _And get a damn' haircut!"_ a voice interrupted.

They all turned in surprise to see McCoy standing in the doorway with a contrite-looking orderly holding him up.

"He wouldn't stay in his quarters, sir," the orderly apologized.

Spock separated himself from the knot of startled onlookers and crossed the room to face McCoy. He dismissed the orderly, taking McCoy's thin arm to support him. They stood in a long silence. Then Spock felt a momentary touch at his shoulder as Kirk and the others passed out of the room. Jim's clasp of encouragement lent Spock a unique steadiness. McCoy was smiling broadly.

"My God, I'm glad to see you, Spock," he rasped. "Welcome home!"

Spock fathomed, then, the relief, the pain, the affection in that voice. Looking at McCoy's frailty, he realized fully the price the doctor had paid to ensure his, Spock's, chance for survival. Once before, with the Vians of Minara, McCoy had similarly gambled his life for the Vulcan's. It was impossible to survive both experiences without some effect, and Spock suddenly _knew,_ with a faith beyond any doubt of logic or emotion, that the doctor was deserving of his utter trust. That not to acknowledge that trust, at least in private, at least in this instance would be... illogical.

It was a difficult task for one not bred to trust on an emotional level, but this situation demanded nothing less. To live among humans, it sometimes became necessary to allow for their natural emotional needs, despite one's personal distaste. The others were gone. They would not see.

With awkward effort, Spock of Vulcan molded his stern features into a hesitant smile. "Welcome home, Doctor McCoy," he said, and meant it.

THE END


End file.
